"And I beheld, and heard the voice of one eagle flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth....[Apocalypse (Revelation) 8:13]

Friday, November 25, 2016

Gluttony and the Seven Deadly Sins

Gluttony and the Seven Deadly Sins

Kimberly Winston

The seven deadly sins (Credit: Pieter Bruegel, Wikimedia Commons.)

Nothing
says Thanksgiving like turkey, gravy and cranberries spilling over
festive tables. But as we prepare to indulge in a sumptuous feast, a
little reminder of why gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins and what
the holiday is really about.

On Thursday, millions of Americans will gorge on
turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and pumpkin pie. Many of us
will try not to make total gluttons of ourselves, as that is generally
frowned upon. But why?
Sure, overeating leads to fat, but there’s a strain of Christian
thought that says it also leads to a whole lot of other no-no’s such
as lust, greed and anger. What is gluttony? Why is it considered one of
the “Seven Deadly Sins” warned against by the Catholic Church for more
than a millennium? How can gluttony - and its six brother “sins” - not
only prevent us from enjoying the holiday but threaten our spiritual
lives? Let us ’Splain …

What are the Seven Deadly Sins?

The Seven Deadly Sins make up the original Christian naughty list. Evagrius Ponticus,
a desert father - a kind of Christian hermit - first identified eight
deadly sins in the fourth century. He ranked them according to the
seriousness of their threat to the spiritual life - gluttony, lust,
avarice, sadness, anger, sloth, vainglory and pride.
Two hundred years later, Pope Gregory added
envy to the list and cut sloth and vainglory (too much like pride,
Gregory thought). He also re-ranked the sins - pride, envy, anger,
sadness, avarice, gluttony and lust. The medieval church warned against
these sins and countered them with seven “virtues” - faith, hope,
charity, fortitude, justice, temperance and prudence - that would fend
the sins off.

Why is gluttony among them?

Evagrius considered gluttony a sort of gateway sin - indulge in this
and all the other sins will follow. “When the intellect is blunted by
satiety,” he wrote, “it does not receive the knowledge of God.” Fun
fact: Evagrius also considered gluttony “the mother of fornication.” Thomas Aquinas, in his “Summa Theologica”
- still an influence on Christian thought - named pride as the gateway
sin because it places man before God. Still, he was no fan of gluttony,
either, concluding, “It is the inordinate desire of food that defiles a
man spiritually.”

How are these sins supposed to be deadly?

Aquinas fleshed out the seriousness of the deadly sins, writing that
because they must be engaged in knowingly, they are a purposeful
rejection of God’s grace. Today, the deadly sins are often called
“mortal sins” because they lead to a total separation from God.
In her book “Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies,” Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung,
a professor at Calvin College, describes the deadly sins, including
gluttony, as things people pursue in the false belief that they - and
not faith in God - will bring true happiness and total fulfillment.
“The Seven Deadly Sins are things that perennially tempt us because
they look like fulfillment and we can get them for ourselves,” she said
in a phone interview. “They are a kind of do-it-yourself happiness
project.”
But medieval Christian thinking held that nothing earthly is the
source of true happiness, so the church fathers preached against them.
“You can’t find happiness in anything finite,” she said.
So, the thinking goes, become a glutton (or a lecher, a hothead, an
envier, etc.) and go to hell. In the 1400s, a series of popular woodcuts
showed the gluttonous dead being force-fed toads, snakes and rats by
bands of fork-tailed devils, while Dante’s epic “Inferno” tells of a “third circle of hell” where gluttons, pursued by a giant stomach with three wormlike heads, lie about in a filthy, cold slush.

Mmmmm, pass the cranberry! What does this have to do with Thanksgiving?

It is this - almost every religion has some teaching about
overindulgence. Don’t let a focus on the food, either as something to
eat or something to throw, distract from the real meaning and purpose of
the holiday: to be grateful for friends, family and what we have,
rather than on what we have not.
“It is the sins of self-gratification that can cut you off from human
relationships and influence the way you see the world,” DeYoung said.
Then, referring to the teachings of another desert father about the
deadly sins, she said, “If you poison the spring, everywhere the spring
flows it takes the poison with it.”

TRADCATKNIGHT VIDEOS!

TCK Youtube Channel

TRADCATKNIGHT- TOP 3 CATHOLIC YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Archbishop Lefebvre

“This Second Vatican Council Reform, since it has issued from Liberalism and from Modernism, is entirely corrupt; it comes from heresy and results in heresy, even if all its acts are not formally heretical. It is thus impossible for any faithful Catholic who is aware of these things to adopt this Reform, or to submit to it in any way at all. To ensure our salvation, the only attitude of fidelity to the Church and to Catholic doctrine, is a categorical refusal to accept the Reform.”

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Archbishop Lefebvre

“And we have the precise conviction that this new rite of Mass expresses a new faith, a faith which is not ours, a faith which is not the Catholic Faith. This New Mass is a symbol, is an expression, is an image of a new faith, of a Modernist faith. ….Now it is evident that the new rite, if I may say so, supposes another conception of the Catholic religion-another religion.”

FOLLOW TRADCATKNIGHT ON TUMBLR!

TCK Facebook

FOLLOW TRADCATKNIGHT ON PINTEREST

Archbishop Lefebvre

That Conciliar Church is a schismatic Church, because it breaks with the Catholic Church that has always been. It has its new dogmas, its new priesthood, its new institutions, its new worship, all already condemned by the Church in many a document, official and definitive.... The Church that affirms such errors is at once schismatic and heretical. This Conciliar Church is, therefore, not Catholic. To whatever extent Pope, Bishops, priests, or faithful adhere to this new Church, they separate themselves from the Catholic Church...

Fr. Hesse Summary on Vatican II

Vatican II = Heretical & Schismatic

Exposing Vatican II & New Mass, Fr. Villa

Archbishop Lefebvre

“Well, we are not of this religion. We do not accept this new religion. We are of the religion of all time; we are of the Catholic religion. We are not of this 'universal religion' as they call it today-this is not the Catholic religion any more. We are not of this Liberal, Modernist religion which has its own worship, its own priests, its own faith, its own catechisms, its own Bible, the 'ecumenical Bible'-these things we do not accept."

Traditional Quotes & Prayers

The Real 3rd Secret of Fatima

Inlcudes Vatican II and the soon Apostate Church..."...because Fatima is a very apocalyptic message. It says that no matter what happens there are going to be terrible wars, there are going to be diseases, whole nations are going to be wiped out, there are going to be 3 days darkness, there are going to be epidemics that will wipe out whole nations overnight, parts of the earth will be washed away at sea and violent tornadoes and storms. It's not a nice message at all." Fr Malachi Martin

SSPX Marian Corps Donations

Marian Corps-Australasia

Fr. Chazal

Fr. Girouard

Or send a cheque made out to Fr. Patrick Girouard at : P.O.Box 1543, Aldergrove, BC, V4W 2V1, Canada.

St. Marcel Initiative

Or, if you prefer, in the U.S., make your contribution by telephone, toll free: 855-4-S. Marcel (855.476.2723), or internationally, by sending your donation directly to donations@stmarcelinitiative.com via PayPal.

TCK TESTIMONIALS

Eric Gajewski, Founder of DefeatModernism(formerly known as Defeat the Heresies)

Resistance Forum

True Traditionalist Forum

Pope XII: “Suicide Of Altering the Faith In Her Liturgy…..”

"I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. … I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past."A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?'"

ALEXA RANK

Find The Rank Of Any Website

Current Crusaders Online Worldwide (RealTime)

St. Bernard:

Go forth confidently then, you knights, and repel the foes of the cross of Christ with a stalwart heart. Know that neither death nor life can separate you from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ, and in every peril repeat, "Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." What a glory to return in victory from such a battle! How blessed to die there as a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord. Life indeed is a fruitful thing and victory is glorious, but a holy death is more important than either. If they are blessed who die in the Lord, how much more are they who die for the Lord!

How secure, I say, is life when death is anticipated without fear; or rather when it is desired with feeling and embraced with reverence! How holy and secure this knighthood and how entirely free of the double risk run by those men who fight not for Christ! Whenever you go forth, O worldly warrior, you must fear lest the bodily death of your foe should mean your own spiritual death, or lest perhaps your body and soul together should be slain by him.

Indeed, danger or victory for a Christian depends on the dispositions of his heart and not on the fortunes of war. If he fights for a good reason, the issue of his fight can never be evil; and likewise the results can never be considered good if the reason were evil and the intentions perverse. If you happen to be killed while you are seeking only to kill another, you die a murderer. If you succeed, and by your will to overcome and to conquer you perchance kill a man, you live a murderer. Now it will not do to be a murderer, living or dead, victorious or vanquished. What an unhappy victory--to have conquered a man while yielding to vice, and to indulge in an empty glory at his fall when wrath and pride have gotten the better of you!

But what of those who kill neither in the heat of revenge nor in the swelling of pride, but simply in order to save themselves? Even this sort of victory I would not call good, since bodily death is really a lesser evil than spiritual death. The soul need not die when the body does. No, it is the soul which sins that shall die.

The knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. If he kills an evildoer, he is not a mankiller, but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil. He is evidently the avenger of Christ towards evildoers and he is rightly considered a defender of Christians. Should he be killed himself, we know that he has not perished, but has come safely into port.

Once he finds himself in the thick of battle, this knight sets aside his previous gentleness, as if to say, "Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord; am I not disgusted with your enemies?" These men at once fall violently upon the foe, regarding them as so many sheep. No matter how outnumbered they are, they never regard these as fierce barbarians or as awe-inspiring hordes. Nor do they presume on their own strength, but trust in the Lord of armies to grant them the victory.

.

.

Saint Athanasius

"May God console you! ... What saddens you ... is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith?The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way ..."You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day. "Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ."